


and someday, the war will come for you

by Platinumroyal



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 12:35:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18873334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Platinumroyal/pseuds/Platinumroyal
Summary: //set after yuzuru's departure from the military camp





	and someday, the war will come for you

**Author's Note:**

> brief mentions of vomiting, some rude language bc ibara is a brat

It's a snowy day in late November when he's summoned to his commanding officer's quarters and receives the news. The ground had frozen over earlier than normal in the season—he would know, he's been in this shithole for longer than he would like to admit—the air biting and the windows tinted with a layer of frost. Most of the privates can't stand the cold, spending every last puff of curling breath on complaining about the weather and the nerve of their superiors for making them do drills outside. He overhears their droll in the canteen, two tables over from where no one cares to sit with him, as he ladles tasteless broth into his mouth; in the shower halls as they swear the pipes have practically frozen over, while he comes as close to scalding himself as he can, just to feel it; through the paper-thin walls of the dormitory, where he sleeps (rather, makes an attempt to nap and then kills time for the rest of the night) alone in his bunk, and wishes that the millionaire asshole who owned the camp could've emptied his pockets out for a little more insulation. Day in and day out, his fellow soldiers have nothing better to do with than waste their breath on  _cold, cold, cold_. To be honest, he'd rather hibernate the months away than listen to their never-ending buzzing right up in his eardrums. He hates everything and everyone here, but it all gets that much more annoying when there's something in common to prattle on about. At least until summer arrives, and then they'll start whining about the heat.

Ibara is cold blooded, so all he needs is a bit of light to bask in, and he's fine year-round. It's a shame that it's been overcast for the last three weeks.

The announcement comes right after their morning training out in the fields, the usual drills that have been branded into his muscles at this point. They line up for roll call before lunch begins, and that's when Ibara spots one of the highest ranking officers out of the corner of his eye. They never come out and look at the worms, unless there is an unruly one to pluck out of the hardened soil. Ibara straightens his posture just a tad; not out of fear, but to get a better look at who's panicking in the crowd.

No one seems to be writhing in their own skin, though, to his dismay. In fact, not all of the officers have even seen the man yet, preferring to stare up at the grey sky or kick at the dirt below them, instead of being observant. Ibara's the most competent of the bunch, surely. He's had enough time to hone his senses.

The commander strides up to their instructor, and nods curtly at him to assume the present authority over the group. More eyes land on him now, Ibara notes as he darts his gaze around.  _Now for the show._

The air is cleared with a shallow cough. "Attention," the commander takes a step closer. "Is Private Saegusa present?"

Not all eyes flit towards him, not immediately. Some of the newer additions to the camp take a good couple of looks around, before realizing who the others are staring at. Their gazes make Ibara itch.

"Sir," he calls out, stepping out of formation to his right and brandishing a salute. Not in the mood to be a brat today.

Everyone is staring now. This doesn't happen, not unless someone is in deep,  _deep_  trouble. Ibara holds his salute steady, his fingertips trembling slightly from the cold.

"Report to my office immediately. That is all." The commander nods back at the instructor again, and that is that. Ibara doesn't lower his hand until the man is back inside.

"You heard him, Private," barks the instructor. "You are dismissed. Everyone else, maintain formation until entering the canteen. Is that clear?"

Halfhearted voices call out a  _sir_.

" _Is that clear?_ "

More people respond this time, and their instructor seems to be satisfied. Ibara, alone, passes through rows and rows of soldiers, and none of them look him in the eye.

He doesn't blame them. He wouldn't look himself in the eye, either.

Ibara knows the route up to his commander's office a little too well, from one too many incidences of delinquency. Refusing to do his work, "accidentally" sabotaging his fellow privates, skipping out on drills to go exploring instead—he practically has a laundry list of infractions from his storied career in military training. For all his insubordination, though, they never had the wherewithal to expel him permanently from his life as a soldier. He wonders what he managed to do this time that pushed them over the edge. Ibara can't recall anything major from the last few weeks, or even the last few months, since his last visit to the Big Scary Office on the Third Floor. No one ever got sent up there for something  _good._  People were intimidated by it for a reason. Well, there  _was_  one instance, when—

His brain forcibly short circuits itself. No use in thinking about that. No use in thinking about  _him_. That traitor. That dog. He's gone, now. Not important. Never important.  _Gone, gone, gone._

Air pushes its way back into his lungs, trying to replace the itchiness that has flooded through his body. Ibara adjusts his glasses and finds himself already outside of his commander's door. Before his fist reaches the wood to knock, a voice is already beckoning him in.

The office is just as stale and awful as he remembers it being last. Steel filing cabinets with a thick layer of dust settled on their tops, a utilitarian desk, just a little too spotless for Ibara's liking, blinds drawn shut across the windows with only slits for dull light to stream in, a tacky fake fern that looks generic and unwanted. Somehow, the room feels ever cooler than the air outside.

A suspicious manila envelope rests at the corner of his desk. 'CONFIDENTIAL' is stamped on its front side, in faded red ink.

"Sit down," his commander folds his hands atop his desk, not even bothering to look over to Ibara as he closes the door. Part of Ibara wrestles with the idea of just standing in the corner with his back to the door. Like he plans of making some grand escape, or something equally as tantalizing as his fantasies from a few years ago. He has the route wired into his brain already. It would be exhilarating. But Ibara is still unaware of how deep the trouble he's in is, so he settles on sulking outwardly and drops down into the worn-out pleather office chair. He crosses his legs, his arms, and if his toes weren't numb, he would have crossed them as well.

His commander sizes him up top to bottom, but only frowns at his obvious insubordinate posture. "Do you know why you're here, Private?"

"Not at all, sir," he says coolly, cocking his head slightly to one side. "I've been a good boy lately, haven't I? Or did you just miss me?"

The commander's fingers lace together tighter, Ibara can tell. His expression does not change. "I'm not playing games with you today, Saegusa."

"Then what did I do?" Ibara presses on. "No one  _ever_  gets to see your ugly old face unless—"

"Shut up and listen, you brat. God, for the amount of years you've been here, you would think that some respect would've been beaten into you by now. And yet you're exactly the same as you were when I first saw you," he sighs, closing his eyes for a moment, before they bore into his desk. "Well, not like it'll matter anymore. Won't have to put up with your bullshit."

_That's_  interesting.

"What was that?" the words escape his mouth before he can shove them down his throat. He curses internally for letting his guard slip for even a second.

"If you would stop interrupting me, then you'd already know, Saegusa," the commander snaps. Ibara's eyes flick back over to the envelope for a split second. "As I was saying. We were contacted last week by a private investigator, who was hired by some big entertainment company. Thought it was a scam at first. That, or an undercover journalist looking to spread rumors. Wouldn’t have been the first time.

"But. I did some research of my own and his story seemed to line up. Told me that the company was looking for a bastard grandchild of their CEO, who just passed away," he stares out the window, at the unmoving clouds. "Well, the guy didn’t word it like that—said something about a lost heir, but I knew what he meant. He didn’t give us too much information, but from the sound of it, there's a big inheritance floating around that the company's shareholders are looking to snatch up. The man had a will, though, so they had to search for his last of kin before they could touch the money."

The gears in Ibara's mind are working overtime. If what the commander was saying was real—there was no other reason to call him here—did that mean—

"Imagine my surprise when he said he was looking for a 'Saegusa'," he chuckles to himself. "I told him, 'I've only known one Saegusa in my entire career, and he's a twelve-year-old rat with an awful personality.' And Private, let me tell you, I've never seen someone so excited to hear that you exist."

"Are you trying to tell me that—"

"Shut up and let me finish. He had a look at your file, and it matched up almost exactly with the information he had. So, Saegusa, I can't be happier to say it: you're leaving."

He couldn’t be serious. This wasn’t happening. He spent so many years of his life rejecting whatever family he might have had, as they had done to him. Days and months and years convincing himself that he was strongest alone, that his life was his to take charge of, that there was no one to tighten a collar around his neck and bind him. Had been abandoned time and time again, and had learned to distance himself from it all. He had endured hell his whole childhood, locked everything inside and everyone else out. Bled and cried and vomited out all the pain that he could. And now, some fairy godmother had waved a magic wand and granted him some stupid fairytale ending? If he looked outside the window, would there be a glass and gemstone carriage waiting for him, to whisk him away to some faraway place? Would he be relaxing in a bed of furs, hand-fed chocolate strawberries, waited on hand and foot? Would he fire his servants at his whim, if they irritated him for just a second? It was disgusting, and very well could be real. People like him weren't supposed to be rewarded for their pain. His life was supposed to be doomed to the gutters of society, no hope to claw his way out.

He feels the urge to throw up. The potted fern is looking pretty tempting.

The commander reaches over to the envelope, finally, and unwinds the string that binds it closed. "This is the first time I've seen you speechless, Private. I would ask you how you feel about the matter, but it doesn’t mean anything regardless. You're going, whether you want to or not," he searches through the envelope blindly, before deftly pulling out some photographs in between his index and middle finger. "You might want to have a look at these, though. The second one is of the people who'll be adopting you, apparently. From what the investigator said, they're high-ranking shareholders in the company, and they'll be maintaining guardianship over you until you come of age. The first picture—" he cuts himself off. "Well, you'll see."

He slides the photographs across the desk. Ibara doesn’t touch them, and instead focuses on not vomiting.

"…You can hang on to them. The investigator said so," the envelope is closed again. "You'll have the rest of today to gather up your belongings. The company car will be here at 0600. Understand, Private?"

His head bobs up and down, unwittingly.

"Good. Now get the hell out of my office, and never show your face to me again."

The photographs end up in his hands somehow. He tucks them into his fatigues, and doesn’t dare to look.

 

* * *

 

Slim hands wrap around his collar, tightening his tie. They move to his suit jacket, adjusting the way it sits on his shoulders, fixing his cufflinks and pulling at the lapels. No matter how much this woman—Ibara really doesn’t even care who she is, at this point, all of the adults he's met have been no more than blurred-out faces—pokes and prods and works her fingers, the jacket doesn’t sit right. He knows why; he's always been overly slender, no matter how much his body was trained at the military camp, so it's no surprise that the jacket needs to be altered. Not that he has any desire to look in a mirror at the moment, but he's sure he's drowning in the thing.

The woman tuts, patting her hands down on his shoulders, in one final attempt to make him look decently presentable. She frowns at him, but stands up to her full height anyways. "And you're sure you don’t want to put contacts in? You have such bright eyes, you're honestly covering them up behind those ugly things. Maybe I should slick your hair back, instead—"

"That's enough, ma'am," his smile is cold. "You may leave."

The look of horror that passes over her face is incredibly satisfying, and worth the potential reaming he'll get later. She  _hmphs_ , and nearly slams the door to the waiting room shut behind her.

Ibara takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. It's been a whirlwind of a month, between the legal proceedings and paperwork and being thrust into the center of upper-class city life. He hates it.

His new guardians are as plain and distant as he expected them to be. They're in their mid-forties, by the looks of it, and neither of them have ever known hardship in their entire lives. The woman tries to get him to call her 'mother', which is a sick joke if he's ever heard one. He doesn’t have parents. He never did, and never will. They spend their money on jewelry and nice cars and maintaining a veneer of perfection.

The maid made him breakfast on his first morning living there. She tells him that he deserves a good meal, that his taste buds are probably fried from all the rations. She smiles at him, and he notices the mole under the left corner of her lip. He comes very close to punching her in the face. Instead, he decides to pickpocket her master key.

They're forgiving (or ignoring, he's not sure which just yet) his attitude, for now. Ibara has made it abundantly clear that he has no desire to be there, not in their house or in this sick society. After they put him to bed every night, he crawls onto the stairwell to listen in on their conversations; the man doesn’t know what to do with him, the woman says he's just not used to it. They agree he'll get better as time goes on.

He hears a number. It's bigger than he thought, and only six years away.

The desire to flee into the night has tripled since his last few weeks at the military camp. Ibara paces around the house at midnight each night, after everyone has gone to bed. He already has a few good escape routes in mind, in case the temptation overcomes him, and he resolves to start squirreling away supplies while no one's the wiser. If only he had access to that bank account…

Ibara slides his glasses on his face and back into the present. He's about to attend some business meeting, this time to discuss the state of the company stocks. Most of the shareholders abandoned ship once his existence came to light, so he's not sure what will happen. Technically, it's his company now, so he's free to do whatever he likes. Perhaps he'll fire everyone and start from scratch. Build things the way they should be done.

Just as he flops back on the couch, the door swings open again. He still doesn’t recognize the two people who enter. One is a middle-aged man, with neatly-styled waved pressed into his light hair, wearing an expensive-looking suit. Despite his age, his eyes are bright. The other looks to be about Ibara's age, as pale and quiet as a ghost, wearing formal clothes as well. Surely they aren’t related, he thinks, but stranger things have happened to him lately. Ibara jerks himself back up and crosses his legs.

"Wait here for now, alright? You won't have to say anything at this one, I promise." The man smooths down the boy's hair, pats him on the head, and is already gone.

Minutes pass, and the boy doesn’t move. Ibara sneaks a glance at him, and finds the boy simply staring at the door, entirely still. If Ibara believed in the supernatural at all, he would swear that this boy was just a spirit that had wandered into the waiting room. He's curious, and has no sense of politeness, so he speaks up.

"Hey, who're you?" he calls out, cocking his head to the side. The boy doesn’t flinch at all, and continues to face the door in silence. "Hey! I'm talking to you, don't ignore me!"

Not a word. Is this kid deaf, or something? Ibara hops off the couch, strides over to where he's standing, and roughly grabs at his shoulder. His voice cracks. "Oi, don’t just stand there, you asshole!"

That finally does it. The boy turns around, slowly and deliberately. He looks like a deer in headlights, wide eyes blinking. There is a long pause. "…What?"

"What do you mean, 'what'? I asked you a question, dumbass," he jerks his hand back and rests it on his hip. "Who even  _are_  you?"

The expression doesn’t leave the boy's face. He pauses again, as if collecting his thoughts. "…No. I don't understand… those words you said. I have never heard them before… what do they mean?"

_What a lucky kid. Hasn’t even had someone curse at him before._  "I was insulting you, if you really want to know. And you still haven’t answered me!"

There is distant chattering coming from outside the room. "…Not very nice of you," the boy steps close into his personal space, and Ibara takes a step backwards, but hits the wall. The boy takes another step, brings his face close to Ibara's. Before Ibara can shove him away, the boy's delicate fingers are framing the sides of his face, pulling at the frames of his glasses, until they come off in his hands. He peers deep into Ibara's eyes, and Ibara can practically hear the sound of his breathing. "…Your eyes… remind me of topaz. Clear and blue. Hiyori-kun's are like amethyst," a smile creeps onto his lips. "…I like them." His voice is soft and light, bearing no weight or energy to it. Ibara feels naked.

He snatches his glasses back, puts them right back on, and fixes his bangs. "Don't touch me." he spits, standing up straighter, and shoves past the boy. He doesn’t move.

"…I am not lying? Father brought me many books on gemstones, I like them very much."

"I don’t give a shit about your father. Or anyone's parents, for that matter," Ibara calls behind him, arms crossed. "And once again, you still haven’t told me who you are. Not like I even care at this point, but still."

The boy parts his lips slightly, preparing to speak, before someone barges open the door. It's the same man as before. "Nagisa-kun, I'll be taking you now. We're not negotiating with any of these fools," the man still hasn’t paid Ibara any heed. "It's not worth it. I hate that I can't do anything more for you, but…"

The boy—Nagisa?—latches onto the man's sleeve, tugging at it gently. "…That is fine. Thank you." He faces Ibara, smiles at him gently, and then walks out of the room. And that is that.

Minutes pass, then hours, and no one comes for him. It is late into the evening before a man comes to collect him. Ibara asks about the meeting, and the man sheepishly admits that it has already happened. Ibara feels cold rage stir in his intestines.

When he gets back to the house, he demands his guardians provide him with a computer. As soon as it comes, he orders accounting and business management textbooks, and has them delivered expressly.

The adults here are all the same, thinking they can control him. It's fine—he knows how to take his own life into his hands. He's made it this far.

Before he goes to make his nighttime rounds, he pulls a chair over to the highest shelf in his living quarters, and grabs blindly until his hands hit his prize. The photo paper is matted with a layer of dust clinging to its glossy surface. He doesn’t bother wiping it off.

He gives one last look at their faces, and tears the photograph to shreds.

He's always been alone in this world, and that's how it will stay.

**Author's Note:**

> hi hi!! military-age ibara is so much fun to write. i reread SS the other day, and had a minor epiphany about ibara's family situation. here's some headcanon to fill in the gaps. hope you enjoyed!! as always, come yell about enstars with me @harmonyleaf on twit.


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